Every thing would live. [ Proverb ]
A bad thing never dies. [ Proverb ]
Death is a fearful thing. [ William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure ]
To one thing at one time. [ Chancellor Thurlow ]
Too much of a good thing. [ William Shakespeare ]
Guilt's a terrible thing. [ Ben Jonson ]
He that will steal a pin
Will steal a better thing. [ Proverb ]
Labor conquers every thing. [ Virgil ]
Order gave each thing view. [ Shakespeare ]
Truth is in thing, not word;
In meaning, not in manner. [ Robert Browning ]
A good thing can't be cruel. [ Dickens ]
A fine thing is soon snapt up. [ French Proverb ]
O sleep! it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole. [ Coleridge ]
Marriage is a desperate thing. [ John Selden ]
A good thing is soon caught up. [ Proverb ]
Oh, God! it is a fearful thing
To see the human soul take wing
In any shape, in any mood! [ Byron ]
Hope is the last thing we lose. [ Italian Proverb ]
Love reflects the thing beloved. [ Tennyson ]
A carper can cavil at any thing. [ Proverb ]
O word and thing most beautiful! [ Susan Coolidge ]
Is it then so sad a thing to die? [ Virgil ]
Prosperity has every thing cheap. [ Proverb ]
Experience is a dumb, dead thing;
The victory's in believing. [ Lowell ]
If any thing stay, let work stay. [ Proverb ]
A bad thing is dear at any price. [ Proverb ]
Every thing is good in its season. [ Proverb ]
A bushel of March dust is a thing,
That's worth the ransom of a king. [ Proverb ]
Oh, fear not in a world like this.
And thou shalt know ere long, -
Know how sublime a thing it is,
To suffer and be strong. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Light Of Stars ]
Common sense is not a common thing. [ Valaincourt ]
Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more!
Men were deceivers ever;
One foot in sea and one on shore,
To one thing constant never. [ Percy ]
She that with poetry is won.
Is but a desk to write upon;
And what men say of her they mean
No more than on the thing they lean. [ Butler ]
Life is as serious a thing as death. [ Bailey ]
Time tries the troth in every thing. [ Thomas Tusser ]
He does much that does a thing well. [ Proverb ]
Sirs, adulation is a fatal thing -
Rank poison for a subject, or a king. [ Dr. Wolcot ]
Every thing is the worse for wearing. [ Proverb ]
Who have not saved some trifling thing
More prized than jewels rare,
A faded flower, a broken ring,
A tress of golden hair. [ Ellen C. Howarth ]
A thing is the bigger of being shared. [ Gaelic Proverb ]
Love is a thing full of anxious fears. [ Ovid ]
In everlasting remembrance of a thing.
Of a little thing a little displeaseth. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
I count this thing to be grandly true:
That a noble deed is a step toward God,
Lifting the soul from the common clod
To a purer air and a broader view. [ J. G. Holland, Pseudonym: Timothy Titcomb ]
Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma or a hideous dream. [ Jul. Caes ]
Can one desire too much of a good thing? [ Cervantes ]
The greatness that would make us grave,
Is but an empty thing.
What more than mirth would mortals have?
The cheerful man's a king. [ Bickerstaff ]
I count this thing to be grandly true.
That a noble deed is a step towards God:
Lifting the soul from the common sod
To a purer air and a broader view. [ J. G. Holland ]
A sceptre is one thing, a ladle another. [ Proverb ]
Oh, if there is one thing above the rest
Written in Wisdom - if there is a word
That I would trace as with a pen of fire
Upon the unsullied temper of a child —
If there is anything that keeps the mind
Open to angel visits, and repels
The ministry of ill - It is Love. [ N. P. Willis ]
False in one thing, false in everything. [ Law Maxim ]
We know that wealth well understood,
Hath frequent power of doing good;
Then fancy that the thing is done,
As if the power and will were one;
Thus oft the cheated crowd adore,
The thriving knaves that keep them poor. [ Gay ]
Oh, say! what is that thing called light,
Which I must never enjoy?
What are the blessings of the sight?
Oh, tell your poor blind boy! [ Colley Cibber ]
He that makes a thing too fine breaks it. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Mother, a maiden is a tender thing,
And best by her that bore her understood. [ Alfred Tennyson ]
A thing desired, but regretfully wanting.
Earth's noblest thing, a woman perfected. [ Lowell ]
Too much of one thing is good for nothing. [ Proverb ]
A nation cannot afford to do a mean thing. [ Charles Sumner ]
It is a good dog that can catch any thing. [ Proverb ]
Condition, circumstance, is not the thing;
Bliss is the same in subject or in king. [ Pope ]
'Tis a stern and a startling thing to think
How often mortality stands on the brink
Of its grave without any misgiving;
And yet in this slippery world of strife,
In the stir of human bustle so rife.
There are daily sounds to tell us that Life
Is dying, and Death is living! [ Hood ]
When a thing is done advice comes too late. [ Proverb ]
Poetry is itself a thing of God;
He made his prophets poets; and the more
We feel of poesie do we become
Like God in love and power, - under makers. [ Bailey ]
Tomorrow; never yet was born
In earth's dull atmosphere a thing so fair
Never tripped, with footsteps light as air,
So glad a vision over the hills of morn. [ Julia C. R. Dorr ]
I cannot tell what you and other men
Think of this life; but for my single self,
I had as lief not be as live to be
In awe of such a thing as I myself. [ William Shakespeare ]
Simplicity is a very rare thing now-a-days. [ Ovid ]
A thing is not bad if we understand it well. [ German Proverb ]
Pain pays the income of each precious thing. [ William Shakespeare ]
A little learning is a dangerous thing:
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again. [ Alexander Pope ]
A thing you don't want is dear at any price. [ Proverb ]
Who dares think one thing, and another tell,
My heart detests him as the gates of hell. [ Homer, Pope's Iliad ]
So dear to heaven is saintly chastity,
That, when a soul is found sincerely so,
A thousand liveried angels lackey her,
Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt. [ Milton ]
Truth is the highest thing that man can keep. [ Geoffrey Chaucer ]
A wicked man is the worst thing in the world. [ Proverb ]
In every thing that you do, consider the end. [ Solon ]
An ass laden with gold overtakes every thing. [ Proverb ]
Life's a tumble-about thing of ups and downs. [ Benjamin Disraeli ]
Men prize the thing ungained more than it is. [ William Shakespeare ]
Be not simply good — be good for some thing. [ Thoreau ]
Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows,
Which show like grief itself, but are not so:
For sorrow's eye glazed with blinding tears,
Divides one thing entire to many objects. [ William Shakespeare ]
The absent danger greater still appears
Less fears he, who is near the thing he fears. [ Daniel ]
How poor a thing is pride! when all, as
Differ but in their fetters, not their graves. [ Daniels ]
That gracious thing, made up of tears and light [ Coleridge ]
How cling we to a thing our hearts have nursed. [ Mrs. C. H. W. Esling ]
When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing. [ William Shakespeare ]
I live.
But live to die: and living, see no thing
To make death hateful, save an innate clinging,
A loathsome and yet all invincible
Instinct of life, which I abhor, as I
Despise myself, yet cannot overcome -
And so I live. [ Byron ]
It is not a chargeable thing to salute civilly. [ Proverb ]
A little of every thing is nothing in the main. [ Proverb ]
A brave soul is a thing which all things serve. [ Alex. Smith ]
Every thing hath an end, and a pudding hath two. [ Proverb ]
Superstition without a veil is a deformed thing. [ Bacon ]
And where two raging fires meet together
They do consume the thing that feeds their fury. [ William Shakespeare ]
The world well tried, the sweetest thing in life
Is the unclouded welcome of a wife. [ Willis ]
A good book may be as great a thing as a battle. [ Benjamin Disraeli ]
Science sees signs; Poetry, the thing signified. [ Hare ]
Oh, the heart is a free and a fetterless thing--
A wave of the ocean, a bird on the wing. [ J. Pardoe ]
Sleep, next to death, is the best thing in life. [ T. Gautier ]
Death, so called, is a thing that makes men weep,
And yet a third of life is pass'd in sleep. [ Byron ]
Too curious man! why dost thou seek to know
Events, which, good or ill, foreknown, are woe!
The all-seeing power, that made thee mortal, gave
Thee every thing a mortal state should have. [ Dryden ]
The care of a large estate is an unpleasant thing. [ Juvenal ]
O heart, and mind, and thoughts! what thing do you
Hope to inherit in the grave below? [ Shelley ]
We know the worth of a thing when we have lost it. [ French ]
Truth is the strong thing. Let man's life be true. [ Robert Browning ]
A hand-saw is a good thing, but not to shave with. [ Proverb ]
Gold adulterates one thing only - the human heart. [ Marguerite de Valois ]
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. [ William Shakespeare ]
A right Englishman knows not when a thing is well. [ Proverb ]
It is an easy thing to find a stick to beat a dog. [ Proverb ]
There is such a thing as the pressure of darkness. [ Victor Hugo ]
It is a wicked thing to make a dearth one's garner. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Life and religion are one, or neither is any thing. [ George MacDonald ]
It is a base thing to tear a dead lion's beard off. [ Proverb ]
Character is a thing that will take care of itself. [ Josiah Gilbert Holland (pseudonym Timothy Titcomb) ]
No thing to do but draw in your stool and sit down. [ Proverb ]
A constant friend is a thing rare and hard to find. [ Plutarch ]
Women are angels, wooing:
Things won are done; joy's soul lies in the doing:
That she beloved knows naught, that knows not this -
Men prize the thing ungamed more than it is. [ William Shakespeare ]
It is a base thing to tread upon a man that is down. [ Proverb ]
It is as hard a thing to please a knave as a knight. [ Proverb ]
Greater and less don't change the nature of a thing.
He who has no character is not a man: he is a thing. [ Chamfort ]
The abuse of a thing is no argument against its use. [ Law Max ]
The thing done avails, and not what is said about it. [ Emerson ]
The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself. [ Thales ]
Wit without judgment is a weary thing to the company. [ Proverb ]
The worth of a thing is best known by the want of it. [ Proverb ]
A mother is a mother still - the holiest thing alive. [ Coleridge ]
Poets are like birds: the least thing makes them sing. [ Chateaubriand ]
A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. [ John Keats, Endymion ]
To grieve over sin is one thing, to repent is another. [ F. W. Robertson ]
Usefulness and baseness cannot exist in the same thing. [ Cicero ]
Temper is so good a thing that we should never lose it.
The one thing in the world of value is the active soul. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
He gave him a thing of nothing to hang upon his sleeve. [ Proverb ]
The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]
Love sacrifices all things to bless the thing it loves. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
It is an ill thing to be deceived, but worse to deceive. [ Proverb ]
Prayer is the chief thing that man may present unto God. [ Hermes ]
He says any thing but his prayers, and them he whistles. [ Proverb ]
There is no such thing as accident; It is fate misnamed. [ Napoleon I ]
To receive honestly is the best thanks for a good thing. [ George MacDonald ]
It is only by loving a thing that you can make it yours. [ George Macdonald ]
A thing is what it is, only in and by means of its limit. [ Hegel ]
It is a terrible thing to be obliged to love by contract. [ Bussy-Rabutin ]
God keep me from the man that hath but one thing to mind. [ Proverb ]
Every thing hath its time, and that time must be watched. [ Proverb ]
The next dreadful thing to a battle lost, is a battle won. [ Duke Of Wellington ]
Virtue and happiness are but two names for the same thing. [ Proverb ]
No great intellectual thing was ever done by great effort. [ John Ruskin ]
Moderation is a fatal thing; nothing succeeds like excess. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]
He who lives but for himself lives but for a little thing. [ Barjaud ]
The abuse of a thing is no argument for its discontinuance. [ Law ]
Unfortunate and imprudent are two words for the same thing. [ French Proverb ]
Boldness in business is the first, second, and third thing. [ Proverb ]
It is a bad thing to be a knave, but worse to be found out. [ Italian Proverb ]
To see may be easy, but to foresee, that is the fine thing. [ Proverb ]
He that is carried down the torrent catches at every thing. [ Proverb ]
The horse thinks one thing and he that saddles him another. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
No great talker ever did any great thing yet in this world. [ Ouida ]
There is a remedy for every thing, could we but hit upon it. [ Proverb ]
Nature has given man no better thing than shortness of life. [ Pliny the Elder ]
It is a worthier thing to deserve honour than to possess it. [ Proverb ]
Those that complain of every thing, never want the headache. [ Proverb ]
Shallow wits censure every thing that is beyond their depth. [ Proverb ]
Pampered vanity is a better thing perhaps than starved pride. [ Joanna Baillie ]
Loneliness is the first thing which God's eye named not good. [ Milton ]
The great man is the man who does a thing for the first time. [ Alexander Smith ]
Art is a jealous thing; it requires the whole and entire man. [ Michael Angelo ]
If principle is good for any thing, it is worth living up to. [ Benjamin Franklin ]
Few and precious are the words which the lips of Wisdom utter,
To what shall their rarity be likened?
What price shall count their worth?
Perfect and much to be desired, and giving joy with riches,
No lovely thing on earth can picture all their beauty. [ Tupper ]
His lungs are very sensible, for every thing makes them laugh. [ Proverb ]
How difficult a thing it is, to persuade most men to be happy! [ Proverb ]
It is as hard a thing as to sail over the sea in an egg-shell. [ Proverb ]
And then it started like a guilty thing Upon a fearful summons. [ William Shakespeare ]
It is the best thing for a stricken heart to be helping others. [ A. H. E ]
There cannot be a more intolerable thing than a fortunate fool. [ Proverb ]
The day that you do a good thing there will be seven new moons. [ Proverb ]
He may make a will upon his nail, for any thing he has to give. [ Proverb ]
Her walk was like no mortal thing, but shaped after an angel's. [ Petrarch ]
It is a most base thing to betray a man because he trusted you. [ Proverb ]
Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about. [ Oscar Wilde, Lady Windemere's Fan ]
It is one thing to speak much, and another to speak pertinently. [ Proverb ]
Experience is always sowing the seed of one thing after another. [ Manilius ]
The essential thing for all creatures is to be made to do right. [ John Ruskin ]
A thing that may not happen in a year may happen in two minutes. [ Spanish Proverb ]
It is a good thing to learn caution by the misfortunes of others. [ Publius Syrius ]
Pride is the most uneasy thing in the world, and the most odious. [ Proverb ]
It takes a thoroughly good woman to do a thoroughly stupid thing. [ Oscar Wilde, Lady Windemere's Fan ]
To know where you can find a thing is the chief part of learning.
There is not so variable a thing in nature as a lady's head-dress. [ Addison ]
It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to deceive himself. [ Proverb ]
Abuse does not hinder the use of a thing that is in itself lawful. [ Proverb ]
No argument can be drawn from the abuse of a thing against its use. [ Latin ]
Pleasure is the only thing to live for. Nothing ages like happiness. [ Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband ]
It is only necessary to give to each thing the time which it claims. [ Angelo Pandolfini ]
A picture is an intermediate something between a thought and a thing. [ Coleridge ]
He that finds a thing, steals it, if he endeavours not to restore it. [ Proverb ]
There are some things I am afraid of: I am afraid to do a mean thing. [ James A. Garfield ]
The only thing that grief has taught me is to know how shallow it is. [ Emerson ]
The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at a time. [ Sir Richard Cecil ]
They that value not praise, will never do any thing worthy of praise. [ Proverb ]
The first thing necessary to win the heart of a woman is opportunity. [ Balzac ]
It is as natural a thing for means to cure, as it is for fire to burn. [ Proverb ]
No good book, or good thing of any sort, shows its best face at first. [ Carlyle ]
Power is a fretful thing, and hath its wings always spread for flight. [ Lew Wallace ]
The years as they pass bereave us first of one thing and then another. [ Horace ]
Money will buy money's worth: but the thing men call fame, what is it? [ Carlyle ]
Her voice was ever soft, gentle, and low; an excellent thing in woman. [ William Shakespeare ]
Advice is like kissing: it costs nothing and is a pleasant thing to do. [ H. W. Shaw ]
Deep insight will always, like Nature, ultimate its thought in a thing. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
It is a hard thing to have a great estate, and not fall in love with it. [ Proverb ]
He that does any thing for the public, is accounted to do it for nobody. [ Proverb ]
He that speaks the thing he should not shall hear the thing he would not. [ Proverb ]
The first and last thing which is required of genius is the love of truth. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
With most men unbelief in one thing is founded on blind belief in another. [ Lichtenberg ]
Our belief or disbelief of a thing does not alter the nature of the thing. [ Tillotson ]
Liberty must be a mighty thing; for by it God punishes and rewards nations. [ Mme. Swetchine ]
Style, after all, rather than thought, is the immortal thing in literature. [ Alexander Smith ]
A holy thing is sleep, on the worn spirit shed, and eyes that wake to weep. [ Mrs. Hemans ]
A thing is worth what it can do for you, not what you choose to pay for it. [ John Ruskin ]
Stay till the lane messenger come, if you will know the truth of the thing. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
When a man's coat is thread-bare, it is an easy thing to pick a hole in it. [ Proverb ]
I know no such thing as genius - genius is nothing but labor and diligence. [ Hogarth ]
How bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes! [ William Shakespeare ]
Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of. [ John Stuart Mill ]
It is a miserable thing for a wise man to be under the government of a fool. [ Proverb ]
The thing is not only to avoid error, but to attain immense masses of truth. [ Carlyle ]
Society would be a charming thing if we were only interested in one another. [ Chamfort ]
It is nothing for you to know a thing unless another knows that you know it. [ Pers ]
Love, which is such a little thing, is still the most serious thing in life. [ Lemontey ]
The hypocrite shows well and says well, and himself is the worst thing he hath. [ Bishop Hall ]
A great thing is a great book, but greater than all is the talk of a great man. [ Earl of Beaconsfield ]
We say a thing is without rhyme or reason when it has neither number nor sense. [ Dr. Johnson ]
Such dupes are men to custom, and so prone
To reverence what is ancient, and can plead
A course of long observance for its use.
That even servitude, the worst of ills,
Because delivered down from sire to son, Is kept and guarded as a sacred thing! [ Cowper ]
Can any thing be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self? [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Ever, as of old, the thing a man will do is the thing he feels commanded to do. [ Carlyle ]
The saddest thing that can befall a soul Is when it loses faith in God and woman. [ Alexander Smith ]
Next to a good conscience, a clear reputation is the clearest thing in the world. [ Proverb ]
One's past is what one is. It is the only thing by which people should be judged. [ Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband ]
The dearest thing in nature is not comparable to the dearest thing of friendship. [ Jeremy Taylor ]
As a general thing, an individual who is neat in his person is neat in his morals. [ H. W. Shaw ]
Goodness consists not in the outward things we do, but in the inward thing we are. [ Chapin ]
Rhetoric adorns and enlarges a thing with words, but is of no value without logic. [ Luther ]
Guilt is a timorous thing ere perpetration; despair alone makes guilty men be bold. [ Coleridge ]
Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing it is always from the noblest motive. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]
Not only is there an art in knowing a thing, but also a certain art in teaching it. [ Cicero ]
Hope is the thing most universally enjoyed; for they have it who have nothing else. [ Epictetus ]
Take my word for it, the saddest thing under the sky is a soul incapable of sadness. [ Mme. de Gasparin ]
Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun. [ Ecclesiates xi:7 ]
The best thing which we derive from history is the enthusiasm which it raises in us. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Honor is an old-world thing; but it smells sweet to those in whose hand it is strong. [ Ouida ]
In one thing men of all ages are alike; they have believed obstinately in themselves. [ Jacobi ]
Each excellent thing, once well learned, serves for a measure of all other knowledge. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
There is no death. The thing that we call death is but another, sadder name for life. [ Stoddard ]
Not till a new thing sprouts up does a man ever enjoy intelligently that which is old. [ Rückert ]
I take it to be a principal rule of life, not to be too much addicted to any one thing. [ Terence ]
A fact is a great thing: a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil. [ Carlyle ]
Wealth is the smallest thing on earth, the least gift that God has bestowed on mankind. [ Martin Luther ]
He that cannot keep his mind to himself cannot practise any considerable thing whatever. [ Carlyle ]
Among all animals, from man to the dog, the heart of a mother is always a sublime thing. [ A. Dumas pere ]
Love is the greatest thing that God can give us, and it is the greatest we can give God. [ Jeremy Taylor ]
Be very sure that no man will learn any thing at all unless he first will learn humility. [ Edward Bulwer Lytton ]
Wealth may be an excellent thing, for it means power, it means leisure, it means liberty. [ Lowell ]
If you in every thing fear, you shall not do well, you will come to do ill in all things. [ Proverb ]
There is no such thing as a white lie; a lie is as black as a coal-pit, and twice as foul. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]
The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself. [ Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband ]
The last thing that we discover in writing a book is to know what to put at the beginning. [ Pascal ]
To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it. [ Thoreau ]
My modesty does not permit me to essay a thing which my powers are not equal to accomplish. [ Virgil ]
A little learning is not a dangerous thing to one who does not mistake it for a great deal. [ Blanco White ]
With the majority of men unbelief in one thing is founded on blind belief in another thing. [ Lichtenberg ]
It is indeed a desirable thing to be well descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors. [ Plutarch ]
I hate a thing done by halves. If it be right, do it boldly; if it be wrong, leave it undone. [ Gilpin ]
It is a sad thing when men have neither wit to speak well nor judgment to hold their tongues. [ La Bruyere ]
It is the hardest thing in the world to be a good thinker without being a good self-examiner. [ Shaftesbury ]
The silence that accepts merit as the most natural thing in the world is the highest applause. [ Emerson ]
When you go in for a job interview, I think a good thing to ask is if they ever press charges. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]
Let us be content, in work, to do the thing we CAN and not presume to fret because it's little. [ E. B. Browning ]
The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving. [ Holmes ]
We bury love; forgetfulness grows over it like grass; that is a thing to weep for, not the dead. [ Alexander Smith ]
When a man has not a good reason for doing a thing, he has one good reason for letting it alone. [ Scott ]
It is better to do the smallest thing in the world than to regard half an hour as a small thing. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Begin by regarding every thing from a moral point of view, and you will end by believing in God. [ Dr. Arnold ]
Resolved: Never to do any thing which I should be afraid to do if it were the last hour of my life. [ JONATHAN EDWARDS ]
When a man is conscious that he does no good himself, the next thing is to cause others to do some. [ Pope ]
To endure is the first thing a child ought to learn, and that which he will have most need to know. [ Rousseau ]
Friendship is the only thing in the world concerning the usefulness of which all mankind are agreed. [ Cicero ]
When any calamity has been suffered, the first thing to be remembered is, how much has been escaped. [ Johnson ]
The greatest thing a man can do for his Heavenly Father is to be kind to some of his other children. [ Henry Drummond ]
Fuss is half-sister to Hurry, and neither of them can do any thing without getting in their own way. [ Henry Wheeler Shaw (pen name Josh Billings) ]
By accident, (i.e. not following from the nature of the thing, but from some accidental circumstance.
It would be a rarity worth seeing could any one show us such a thing as a perfectly reconciled enemy. [ South ]
Many men have been capable of doing a wise thing, more a cunning thing, but very few a generous thing. [ Alexander Pope ]
A nation is a thing that lives and acts like a man, and men are the particles of which it is composed. [ J. G. Holland ]
Avoid him who from mere curiosity asks three questions running about a thing that cannot interest him. [ Lavater ]
Trouble is a thing that will come without our call; but true joy will not spring up without ourselves. [ Bp. Patrick ]
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]
I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]
I love these little people; and it is not a slight thing when they, who are so fresh from God, love us. [ Dickens ]
There is no doubt such a thing as chance, but I see no reason why Providence should not make use of it. [ Simms ]
Greatness is not a teachable nor gainable thing, but the expression of the mind of a God-made great man. [ Ruskin ]
If you are going to do a good thing, do it now; if you are going to do a mean thing, wait till tomorrow.
It is one thing to wish to have truth on our side, and another thing to wish to be on the side of truth. [ Richard Whately ]
Too bad there's not such a thing as a golden skunk, because you'd probably be proud to be sprayed by one. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]
Hate belongs with sin. If we do a wrong, we hate either the thing or God, or ourselves, or somebody else. [ Duffield ]
He that does a base thing in zeal for his friend burns the golden thread that ties their hearts together. [ Jeremy Taylor ]
Is example nothing? It is every thing. Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other. [ Edmund Burke ]
It is base to say one thing and to think another; how much more base to write one thing and think another! [ Seneca ]
No human capacity ever yet saw the whole of a thing; but we may see more and more of it the longer we look. [ John Ruskin ]
The recovery of freedom is so splendid a thing that we must not shun even death when seeking to recover it. [ Cicero ]
Goodness consists not in the outward things we do, but in the inward thing we are. To be is the great thing. [ E. H. Chapin ]
To be rational is so glorious a thing that two-legged creatures generally content themselves with the title. [ Locke ]
The grave - dread thing! - men shiver when thou art named; Nature, appalled, shakes off her wonted firmness. [ Blair ]
To what gods is sacrificed that rarest and sweetest thing upon earth, friendship? To vanity and to interest. [ Malesherbes ]
In giving, a man receives more than he gives; and the more is in proportion to the worth of the thing given. [ George MacDonald ]
The modern sympathy with invalids is morbid. Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others. [ Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest ]
A philosopher being asked what was the first thing necessary to win the love of a woman, answered. Opportunity! [ Moore ]
There is no such thing as good influence. All influence is immoral - immoral from the scientific point of view. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]
The worst education that teaches self-denial is better than the best that teaches every thing else, and not that. [ John Sterling ]
High rank and discernment are two different things, and love for virtue and for virtuous people is a third thing. [ La Bruyère ]
There is no such thing as chance; and what seems to us merest accident springs from the deepest source of destiny. [ Friedrich Schiller ]
Little League baseball is a good thing because it keeps the parents off the streets and the kids out of the house. [ Yogi Berra ]
Whoever is in a hurry shows that the thing he is about is too big for him. Haste and hurry are very different things. [ Chesterfield ]
A sentimentalist is a man who sees an absurd value in everything and doesn't know the market price of a single thing. [ Oscar Wilde, Lady Windemere's Fan ]
We are either progressing or retrograding all the while; there is no such thing as remaining stationary in this life. [ James Freeman Clarke ]
May I tell you why it seems to me a good thing for us to remember wrong that has been done us? That we may forgive it. [ Dickens ]
There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It is a thing no married man knows anything about. [ Oscar Wilde, Lady Windemere's Fan ]
To profess one thing and to do another occurs very often, especially with those who continually boast of their virtue. [ T. Gautier ]
Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forego an advantage. [ Beaconsfield ]
There is no such thing as a dumb poet or a handless painter. The essence of an artist is that he should be articulate. [ Stedman ]
Shadows are in reality, when the sun is shining, the most conspicuous thing in a landscape, next to the highest lights. [ Ruskin ]
If you realize an incentive to do a good thing, an act of benevolence, do it at once; do not put it off until tomorrow. [ Henry Home ]
You are a devil at everything, and there is no kind of thing in the universal world but what you can turn your hand to. [ Cervantes ]
It is an awfully dangerous thing to come across a woman who thoroughly understands one. They always end by marrying one. [ Oscar Wilde, Lady Windemere's Fan ]
Character shows itself apart from genius as a special thing. The first point of measurement of any man is that of quality. [ T. W. Higginson ]
Earthly greatness is a nice thing, and requires so much chariness in the managing, as the contentment of it cannot requite. [ Hall ]
It is a wretched thing to lean on the reputation of others, lest the pillars being withdrawn the roof should fall in ruins. [ Juvenal ]
Pain is the deepest thing we have in our nature, and union through pain has always seemed more real and holy than any other. [ Hallam ]
Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of every thing. [ Sydney Smith ]
Self-sacrifice is a thing that should be put down by law. It is so demoralizing to the people for whom one sacrifices oneself. [ Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband ]
If the soul be happily disposed, every thing becomes capable of affording entertainment, and distress will almost want a name. [ Goldsmith ]
There's no possibility of being witty without a little ill-nature; the malice of a good thing is the barb that makes it stick. [ Sheridan ]
The thing formed says that nothing formed it; and that which is made is, while that which made it is not! The folly is infinite. [ Jeremy Taylor ]
Indulge in procrastination, and in time you will come to this, that because a thing ought to be done, therefore you can't do it. [ Charles Buxton ]
Dost thou think that there is little difference whether thou dost a thing from the heart, as nature suggests, or with a purpose? [ Terence ]
Wealth, after all, is a relative thing, since he that has little, and wants less, is richer than he that has much but wants more. [ Colton ]
Martha says the interesting thing about fly fishing is that it's two lives connected by a thin strand. Come on, Martha. Grow up. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]
There is only one thing better than tradition, and that is the original and eternal life out of which all tradition takes its rise. [ Lowell ]
There is no such thing as being agreeable without a thorough good-humour, a natural sweetness of temper, enlivened by cheerfulness. [ Lady Montagu ]
The most gladsome thing in the world is that few of us fall very low; the saddest that, with such capabilities, we seldom rise high. [ J. M. Barrie ]
It is with sincere affection or friendship as with ghosts and apparitions, a thing that everybody talks of, and scarce any hath seen. [ Rochefoucauld ]
No man can make haste to be rich without going against the will of God, in which case it is the one frightful thing to be successful. [ George MacDonald ]
A beautiful woman with the qualities of a noble man is the most perfect thing in nature: we find in her all the merits of both sexes. [ La Bruyere ]
A little scandal is an excellent thing; nobody is ever brighter or happier of tongue than when he is making mischief of his neighbors. [ Ouida ]
The angels may have wider spheres of action, may have nobler forms of duty; but right with them and with us is one and the same thing. [ Chapin ]
When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it: this is knowledge. [ Confucius ]
Music was a thing of the soul; a rose-lipped shell that murmured of the eternal sea; a strange bird singing the songs of another shore. [ J. G. Holland ]
In mediaeval art, thought is the first thing, execution the second; in modern art, execution is the first thing and thought the second. [ John Ruskin ]
No great intellectual thing was ever done by great effort; a great thing can only be done by a great man, and be does it without effort. [ Ruskin ]
Prosperity, in regard of our corrupt inclination to abuse the blessings of Almighty God, doth prove a thing dangerous to the soul of man. [ Hooker ]
Not only to say the right thing in the right place, but, far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment. [ 0. A. Sala ]
The production of something, where nothing was before, is an act of greater energy than the expansion or decoration of the thing produced. [ Johnson ]
Each thing lives according to its kind; the heart by love, the intellect by truth, the higher nature of man by intimate communion with God. [ Chapin ]
There is a better thing than the great man who is always speaking, and that is the great man who only speaks when he has a great word to say. [ William Winter ]
The heart is a small thing, but desireth great matters; it is not sufficient for a kite's dinner, yet the whole world is not sufficient for it. [ V. Hugo ]
There is no such thing as romance in our day, women have become too brilliant; nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]
The most difficult thing in all works of art is to make that which has been most highly elaborated appear as if it had not been elaborated at all. [ Winkelmann ]
Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective, a lot of hope is dangerous. A spark is fine, as long as it's contained. [ The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins (President Snow) ]
To admit that there is any such thing as chance, in the common acceptation of the term, would be to attempt to establish a power independent of God. [ Colton ]
If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about it; for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else. [ Carlyle ]
When women have passed thirty, the first thing they forget is their age; when they have attained forty, they have entirely lost the remembrance of it. [ Ninon de Lenclos ]
If you ever teach a yodeling class, probably the hardest thing is to keep the students from just trying to yodel right off. You see, we build to that. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]
Is not this a lamentable thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment? That parchment, being scribbled o'er, should undo a man? [ William Shakespeare ]
Cullen whispered in his last moments: I wish I had the power of writing or speaking, for then I would describe to you how pleasant a thing it is to die.
[ Dr. Derby ]
Before Greece, every thing in human literature and art was a rude and imperfect attempt. Since Greece, every thing has been a rude and imperfect imitation. [ James Freeman Clarke ]
In revenge a man is but even with his enemy; for it is a princely thing to pardon, and Solomon saith it is the glory of a man to pass over a transgression. [ Bacon ]
O, the eye's light is a noble gift of heaven! All beings live from light; each fair created thing. The very plants turn with a joyful transport to the light. [ Schiller ]
There is no royal road to anything. One thing at a time, all things in succession. That which grows fast withers as rapidly; that which grows slowly endures. [ J. G. Holland ]
It is a revered thing to see an ancient castle not in decay; how much more to behold an ancient family which have stood against the waves and weathers of time! [ Bacon ]
Wisdom and understanding are synonymous words; they consist of two propositions, which are not distinct in sense, but one and the same thing variously expressed. [ Tillotson ]
Nature glories in death more than in life. The month of departure is more beautiful than the month of coming.... Every green thing loves to die in bright colours. [ Ward Beecher ]
It is an odd thing, but every one who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco. It must be a delightful city and possess all the attractions of the next world. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]
Anytime I see something screech across a room and latch onto someone's neck, and the guy screams and tries to get it off, I have to laugh, because what is that thing. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]
It is a curious thing about the game of marriage - a game, by the way, that is going out of fashion - the wives hold all the honors and invariably lose the odd trick. [ Oscar Wilde, Lady Windemere's Fan ]
Happiness is that single and glorious thing which is the very light and sun of the whole animated universe; and where she is not it were better that nothing should be. [ Colton ]
That which can be done with perfect convenience and without loss, is not always the thing that most needs to be done, or which we are most imperatively required to do. [ John Ruskin ]
The imputation of being a fool is a thing which mankind, of all others, is the most impatient of, it being a blot upon the prime and specific perfection of human nature. [ South ]
Is it not a thing divine to have a smile which, none know how, has the power to lighten the weight of that enormous chain which all the living in common drag behind them? [ Victor Hugo ]
Generosity during life is a very different thing from generosity in the hour of death; one proceeds from genuine liberality and benevolence, the other from pride or fear. [ Horace Mann ]
There is but one thing necessary to keep the possession of true glory, which is to hear the opposers of it with patience, and preserve the virtue by which it was acquired. [ Steele ]
In this world there is one godlike thing, the essence of all that ever was or ever will be of godlike in this world, - the veneration done to human worth by the hearts of men. [ Carlyle ]
High birth is a thing which I never knew any one to disparage except those who had it not; and I never knew any one to make a boast of it who had anything else to be proud of. [ Bishop Warburton ]
If I ever do a book on the Amazon, I hope I am able to bring a certain lightheartedness to the subject, in a way that tell the reader we are going to have fun with this thing. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]
I think it is the most beautiful and humane thing in the world, so to mingle gravity with pleasure that the one may not sink into melancholy, nor the other rise up into wantonness. [ Pliny the Elder ]
To the understanding of anything, two conditions are equally required - intelligibility in the thing itself being no whit more indispensable than intelligence in the examiner of it. [ Carlyle ]
Real knowledge, like every thing else of the highest value, is not to be obtained easily. It must be worked for, studied for, thought for, and, more than all, it must be prayed for. [ Thomas Arnold ]
The fact is, that to do any thing in this world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in, and scramble through as well as we can. [ Sydney Smith ]
The great blessings of mankind are within us, and within our reach; but we shut our eyes, and, like people in the dark, we fall foul upon the very thing we search for, without finding it. [ Seneca ]
He was given to flights of oratory that way - a very dangerous thing, for often the wings which take one into clouds of oratorical enthusiasm are wax and melt up there, and down you come. [ Mark Twain, Educations and Citizenship ]
If there be one thing on earth which is truly admirable, it is to see God's wisdom blessing an inferiority of natural powers, where they have been honestly, truly, and zealously cultivated. [ Dr. Arnold ]
She is not a brilliant woman; she is not even an intellectual one; but there is such a thing as a genius for affection, and she has it. It has been good for her husband that he married her. [ Helen Hunt ]
A very desperate habit; one that is rarely cured. Apology is only egotism wrong side out. Nine times out of ten, the first thing a man's companion knows of his shortcomings is from his apology. [ Holmes ]
If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is God is crying.
And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is Probably because of something you did.
[ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]
The main thing in writing is to have distinct, and clear, and well-marshalled ideas, and then to express them simply and without affectation. This forms what we may call the bones of a good style. [ John Stuart Blackie, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]
God help us! it is a foolish little thing, this human life, at the best; and it is half ridiculous and half pitiful to see what importance we ascribe to it, and to its little ornaments and distinction? [ Jeffrey ]
Judge every word and deed which is according to nature to be fit for thee, and be not diverted by the blame which follows; but if a thing is good to be done or said, do not consider it unworthy of thee. [ Marcus Aurelius ]
He who would do some great thing in this short life, must apply himself to the work with such a concentration of his forces as to the idle spectators, who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity. [ John Foster ]
Make a point never so clear, it is great odds that a man whose habits and the bent of whose mind lie a contrary way, shall be unable to comprehend it. So weak a thing is reason in competition with inclination. [ Bishop Berkeley ]
God hides some ideal in every human soul. At some time in our life we feel a trembling, fearful longing to do some good thing. Life finds its noblest spring of excellence in this hidden impulse to do our best. [ Robert Collyer ]
The first thing naturally when one enters a scholar's study or library, is to look at his books. One gets the notion very speedily of his tastes and the range of his pursuits by a glance around his book-shelves. [ O. W. Holmes ]
There is no contending with necessity, and we should be very tender how we censure those that submit to it. It is one thing to be at liberty to do what we will, and another thing to be tied up to do what we must. [ L'Estrange ]
People seldom read a book which is given to them; and few are given. The way to spread a work is to sell it at a low price. No man will send to buy a thing that costs even sixpence without an intention to read it. [ Johnson ]
It is harder to avoid censure than to gain applause; for this may be done by one great or wise action in an age. Rut to escape censure a man must pass his whole life without saying or doing one ill or foolish thing. [ Hume ]
Poetry is musical thought, thought of a mind that has penetrated into the inmost heart of a thing, detected the melody that lies hidden in it, ... the heart of Nature being everywhere music, if you can only reach it. [ Carlyle ]
There is no such thing as Liberty in the universe: there can never be. The stars have it not; the earth has it not; the sea has it not; and we men have the mockery and semblance of it only for our heaviest punishment. [ John Ruskin ]
To me, truth is not some vague, foggy notion. Truth is real. And, at the same time, unreal. Fiction and fact and everything in between, plus some things I can't remember, all rolled into one big thing
. This is truth, to me. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]
I shall pass through this world but once. Any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer it or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again. [ A. B. Hegeman ]
The power of painter or poet to describe rightly what he calls an ideal thing depends upon its being to him not an ideal, but a real thing. No man ever did or ever will work well but either from actual sight or sight of faith. [ Ruskin ]
No good book or good thing of any sort shows its best face at first; nay, the commonest quality in a true work of art, if its excellence have any depth and compass, is that at first sight it occasions a certain disappointment. [ Carlyle ]
Nothing more strikingly betrays the credulity of mankind than medicine. Quackery is a thing universal, and universally successful. In this case it becomes literally true that no imposition is too great for the credulity of men. [ Thoreau ]
I know not whether there exists such a thing as a coin stamped with a pair of pinions; but I wish this were the device which monarchs put upon their dollars and ducats, to show that riches make to themselves wings, and fly away. [ Gotthold ]
Love and the Soul, working together, might go on producing Venuses without end, each different, and all beautiful; but divorced and separated, they may continue producing indeed, yet no longer any being, or even thing, truly godlike. [ Ed ]
Any man shall speak the better when he knows what others have said, and sometimes the consciousness of his inward knowledge gives a confidence to his outward behavior, which of all other is the best thing to grace a man in his carriage. [ Feltham ]
No good or lovely thing exists in this world without its correspondent darkness; and the universe presents itself continually to mankind under the stern aspect of warning, or of choice, the good and the evil set on the right hand and the left. [ John Ruskin ]
Every man must bear his own burden, and it is a fine thing to see any one trying to do it manfully; carrying his cross bravely, silently, patiently, and in a way which makes you hope that he has taken for his pattern the greatest of all sufferers. [ James Hamilton ]
Wisdom is the only thing which can relieve us from the sway of the passions and the fear of danger, and which can teach us to bear the injuries of fortune itself with moderation, and which shows us all the ways which lead to tranquillity and peace. [ Cicero ]
Pride is as loud a beggar as want, and a great deal more saucy. When you have bought one fine thing, you must buy ten more, that your appearance may be all of a piece; but it is easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy all that follow it. [ Franklin ]
The one thing that marks the true artist is a clear perception and a firm, bold hand, in distinction from that imperfect mental vision and uncertain touch which give us the feeble pictures and the lumpy statues of the mere artisans on canvas or in stone. [ O. W. Holmes ]
Nothing is more silly than the pleasure some people take in speaking their minds.
A man of this make will say a rude thing for the mere pleasure of saying it, when an opposite behavior, full as innocent, might have preserved his friend, or made his fortune. [ Steele ]
The absent one is an ideal person; those who are present seem to one another to be quite commonplace. It is a silly thing that the ideal is, as it were, ousted by the real; that may be the reason why to the moderns their ideal only manifests itself in longing. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
There is a gentle, but perfectly irresistible coercion in a habit of reading well directed, over the whole tenor of a man's character and conduct, which is not the less effectual because it works insensibly, and because it is really the last thing he dreams of. [ Sir John Herschel ]
Society is a necessary thing. No man has any real success in this world unless he has women to back him, and women rule society. If you have not got women on your side you are quite over. You might as well be a barrister, or a stock-broker, or a journalist at once. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]
Chance is a term we apply to events to denote that they happen without any necessary or foreknown cause. When we say a thing happens by chance, we mean no more than that its cause is unknown to us, and not, as some vainly imagine, that chance itself can be the cause of anything. [ C. Buck ]
It is very sad for a man to make himself servant to a thing, his manhood all taken out of him by the hydraulic pressure of excessive business. I should not like to be merely a great doctor, a great lawyer, a great minister, a great politician - I should like to be also something of a man. [ Theodore Parker ]
We have often thought it strange that moralists should have written and spoken of the mutability of human life as if it were a thing to be dreaded and mourned over; to our mind, mutability is the soul of poetry, and the source of nearly all the most delightful and sacred pleasures of life. [ Stubbs ]
What a wretched thing is all fame! A renown of the highest sort endures, say, for two thousand years. And then? Why, then, a fathomless eternity swallows it. Work for eternity: not the meagre rhetorical eternity of the periodical critics, but for the real eternity, wherein dwelleth the Divine. [ Carlyle ]
Style! style, why, all writers will tell you that it is the very thing which can least of all be changed. A man's style is nearly as much a part of him as his physiognomy, his figure, the throbbing of his pulse, - in short, as any part of his being which is at least subjected to the action of the will. [ Fenelon ]
There are few thoughts likely to come across ordinary men which have not already been expressed by greater men in the best possible way; and it is a wiser, more generous, more noble thing to remember and point out the perfect words than to invent poorer ones, wherewith to encumber temporarily the world. [ John Ruskin ]
We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner time; keep back the tears, and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, Oh, nothing!
Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts, not to hurt others. [ George Eliot ]
Morals are of inestimable value, for every man is born crammed with sin microbes, and the only thing that can extirpate these sin microbes is morals. Now you take a sterilized Christian - I mean, you take the sterilized Christian, for there's only one. Dear sir, I wish you wouldn't look at me like that. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]
It is strictly and philosophically true in Nature and reason that there is no such thing as chance or accident; it being evident that these words do not signify anything really existing, anything that is truly an agent or the cause of any event; but they signify merely men's ignorance of the real and immediate cause. [ Adam Clarke ]
Oh, my dear friends, - you who are letting miserable misunderstandings run on from year to year, meaning to clear them up some day, - if you only could know and see and feel that the time is short, how it would break the spell! How you would go instantly and do the thing which you might never have another chance to do! [ Phillips Brooks ]
The very greatest genius, after all, is not the greatest thing in the world, any more than the greatest city in the world is the country or the sky. It is the concentration of some of its greatest powers, but it is not the greatest diffusion of its might. It is not the habit of its success, the stability of its sereneness. [ Leigh Hunt ]
Learn to be good readers, which is perhaps a more difficult thing than you imagine. Learn to be discriminative In your reading; to read faithfully and with your best attention, all kinds of things which you have a real interest in, - a real, not an imaginary - and which you find to be really fit for what you are engaged in. [ Carlyle ]
Young men are as apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are to think themselves sober enough. They look upon spirit to be a much better thing than experience; which they call coldness. They are but half mistaken; for though spirit without experience is dangerous, experience without spirit is languid and ineffective. [ Chesterfield ]
Most people give up before they start because they think it is too hard, there is too much against me here, I can’t do this on my own, I don’t have the resources. I was on the back to work scheme when I applied. I didn’t have resources... It never occurred to me to fail. I always knew it was part of my destiny to do that thing. [ Mary Reynolds, 2002 Gold Medal Winner of the Chelsea Flower Show ]
Neither can we admit that definition of genius that some would propose - a power to accomplish all that we undertake;
for we might multiply examples to prove that this definition of genius contains more than the thing defined. Cicero failed in poetry. Pope in painting. Addison in oratory; yet it would be harsh to deny genius to these men. [ Colton ]
Never teach false modesty. How exquisitely absurd to teach a girl that beauty is of no value, dress of no use! Beauty is of value; her whole prospects and happiness in life may often depend upon a new gown or a becoming bonnet; if she has five grains of commonsense she will find this out. The great thing is to teach her their proper value. [ Sydney Smith ]
There is no one passion which all mankind so naturally give in to as pride, nor any other passion which appears in such different disguises. It is to be found in all habits and all complexions. Is it not a question whether it does more harm or good in the world, and if there be not such a thing as what we may call a virtuous and laudable pride? [ Steele ]
The only thing that has been taught successfully to women is to wear becomingly the fig-leaf they received from their first mother. Everything that is said and repeated for the first eighteen or twenty years of a woman's life is reduced to this: My daughter, take care of your fig-leaf; your fig-leaf becomes you; your fig-leaf does not become you.
[ Diderot ]
Any one may mouth out a passage with a theatrical cadence, or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts; but to write or speak with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task. Thus it is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big as the thing you want to express; it is not so easy to pitch upon the very word that exactly fits it. [ Hazlitt ]
An observant man, in all his intercourse with society and the world, carries a pencil constantly in his hand, and, unperceived, marks on every person and thing the figure expressive of its value, and therefore instantly on meeting that person or thing again, knows what kind and degree of attention to give it. This is to make something of experience. [ John Foster ]
Facts are to the mind the same thing as food to the body. On the due digestion of facts depends the strength and wisdom of the one, just as vigour and health depend on the other. The wisest in council, the ablest in debate, and the most agreeable in the commerce of life, is that man who has assimilated to his understanding the greatest number of facts. [ Burke ]
Wealth brings noble opportunities, and competence is a proper object of pursuit; but wealth, and even competence, may be bought at too high a price. Wealth itself has no moral attribute. It is not money, but the love of money, which is the root of all evil. It is the relation between wealth and the mind and the character of its possessor which is the essential thing. [ Hillard ]
Cheeriness is a thing to be more profoundly grateful for than all that genius ever inspired or talent ever accomplished. Next best to natural, spontaneous cheeriness is deliberate, intended and persistent cheeriness, which we can create, can cultivate and can so foster and cherish that after a few years the world will never suspect that it was not an hereditary gift. [ Helen Hunt Jackson ]
I bet a fun thing would be to go way back in time to where there was going to be an eclipse and tell the cave men, If I have come to destroy you, may the sun be blotted out from the sky.
Just then the eclipse would start, and they'd probably try to kill you or something, but then you could explain about the rotation of the moon and all, and everyone would get a good laugh. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]
That great mystery of time, were there no other; the illimitable, silent never-resting thing called time,
rolling, rushing on, swift, silent like an all-embracing oceantide, on which we and all the universe swim like exhalations, like apparitions which are and then are not - this is for ever very literally a miracle, a thing to strike us dumb; for we have no word to speak about it. [ Carlyle ]
Mutability is the badge of infirmity; it is seldom that a man continues to wish and design the same thing two days alike; now he is for marrying, and now a mistress is preferred to a wife; now he is ambitious and aspiring, presently the meanest servant is not more humble than he; this hour he squanders his money away, the next he turns miser; sometimes he is frugal and serious, at other times profuse, airy, and gay. [ Charron ]
Neighborhood or Vicinity? Neighborhood means the place which is nigh, that is, nigh to one's habitation; vicinity primarily means the place which does not exceed in distance the extent of a village. Neighborhood refers to the inhabitants, or to inhabited places, and denotes nearness of persons to each other, or to objects; as, a populous neighborhood, vicinity denotes nearness of one object to another, whether person or thing; as, Oakland is in the vicinity of San Francisco.
Let us now suppose that in the mind of each man there is an aviary of all sorts of birds some flocking together apart from the rest, others in small groups, others solitary, flying anywhere and everywhere. . . . We may suppose that the birds are kinds of knowledge, and that when we were children, this receptacle was empty; whenever a man has gotten and detained in the enclosure a kind of knowledge, he may be said to have learned or discovered the thing which is the subject of the knowledge: and this is to know. [ Dialogues, Theaetetus ]
The desire of excellence is the necessary attribute of those who excel. We work little for a thing unless we wish for it. But we cannot of ourselves estimate the degree of our success in what we strive for; that task is left to others. With the desire for excellence comes, therefore, the desire for approbation. And this distinguishes intellectual excellence from moral excellence; for the latter has no necessity of human tribunal; it is more inclined to shrink from the public than to invite the public to be its judge. [ Bulwer-Lytton ]
Those who worship gold in a world so corrupt as this we live in have at least one thing to plead in defense of their idolatry - the power of their idol. It is true that, like other idols, it can neither move, see, hear, feel, nor understand; but, unlike other idols, it has often communicated all these powers to those who had them not, and annihilated them in those who had. This idol can boast of two peculiarities; it is worshipped in all climates, without a single temple, and by all classes, without a single hypocrite. [ Colton ]
There is a hand that has no heart in it, there is a claw or paw, a flipper or fin, a bit of wet cloth to take hold of, a piece of unbaked dough on the cook's trencher, a cold clammy thing we recoil from, or greedy clutch with the heat of sin, which we drop as a burning coal. What a scale from the talon to the horn of plenty, is this human palmleaf! Sometimes it is what a knifeshaped, thin-bladed tool we dare not grasp, or like a poisonous thing we shake off, or unclean member, which, white as it may look, we feel polluted by! [ C. A. Bartol ]
He who expects from a great name in politics, in philosophy, in art, equal greatness in other things, is little versed in human nature. Our strength lies in our weakness. The learned in books are ignorant of the world. He who is ignorant of books is often well acquainted with other things; for life is of the same length in the learned and unlearned; the mind cannot be idle; if it is not taken up with one thing, it attends to another through choice or necessity; and the degree of previous capacity in one class or another is a mere lottery. [ Hazlitt ]
Greatness is not a teachable nor gainable thing, but the expression of the mind of a God-made man: teach, or preach, or labour as you will, everlasting difference is set between one man's capacity and another's; and this God-given supremacy is the priceless thing, always just as rare in the world at one time as another.... And nearly the best thing that men can generally do is to set themselves, not to the attainment, but the discovery of this: learning to know gold, when we see it, from iron-glance, and diamond from flint-sand, being for most of us a more profitable employment than trying to make diamonds of our own charcoal. [ John Ruskin ]
A beau is one who arranges his curled locks gracefully, who ever smells of balm, and cinnamon; who hums the songs of the Nile, and Cadiz; who throws his sleek arms into various attitudes; who idles away the whole day among the chairs of the ladies and is ever whispering into some one's ear; who reads little billets-doux from this quarter and that, and writes them in return; who avoids ruffling his dress by contact with his neighbors sleeve, who knows with whom everybody is in love; who flutters from feast to feast, who can recount exactly the pedigree of Hirpinus. What do you tell me? is this a beau, Cotilus? Then a beau, Cotilus, is a very trifling thing. [ Martial ]
In the matter of diet - which is another main thing - I have been persistently strict in sticking to the things which didn't agree with me until one or the other of us got the best of it. Until lately I got the best of it myself. But last spring I stopped frolicking with mince-pie after midnight; up to then I had always believed it wasn't loaded. For thirty years I have taken coffee and bread at eight in the morning, and no bite nor sup until seven-thirty in the evening. Eleven hours. That is all right for me, and is wholesome, because I have never had a headache in my life, but headachy people would not reach seventy comfortably by that road, and they would be foolish to try it. And I wish to urge upon you this - which I think is wisdom - that if you find you can't make seventy by any but an uncomfortable road, don't you go. When they take off the Pullman and retire you to the rancid smoker, put on your things, count your checks, and get out at the first way station where there's a cemetery. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]
Morals are an acquirement - like music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker, paralysis - no man is born with them. I wasn't myself, I started poor. I hadn't a single moral. There is hardly a man in this house that is poorer than I was then. Yes, I started like that - the world before me, not a moral in the slot. Not even an insurance moral. I can remember the first one I ever got. I can remember the landscape, the weather, the - I can remember how everything looked. It was an old moral, an old second-hand moral, all out of repair, and didn't fit, anyway. But if you are careful with a thing like that, and keep it in a dry place, and save it for processions, and Chautauquas, and World's Fairs, and so on, and disinfect it now and then, and give it a fresh coat of whitewash once in a while, you will be surprised to see how well she will last and how long she will keep sweet, or at least inoffensive. When I got that mouldy old moral, she had stopped growing, because she hadn't any exercise; but I worked her hard, I worked her Sundays and all. Under this cultivation she waxed in might and stature beyond belief, and served me well and was my pride and joy for sixty-three years; then she got to associating with insurance presidents, and lost flesh and character, and was a sorrow to look at and no longer competent for business. She was a great loss to me. Yet not all loss. I sold her - ah, pathetic skeleton, as she was - I sold her to Leopold, the pirate King of Belgium; he sold her to our Metropolitan Museum, and it was very glad to get her, for without a rag on, she stands 57 feet long and 16 feet high, and they think she's a brontosaur. Well, she looks it. They believe it will take nineteen geological periods to breed her match. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]